Tag: Price Cycles

The recent behaviour of prices has polarised views about the key drivers of oil prices. One view attributes the recent behaviour in oil prices to structural transformations in the fundamentals of the oil market. An alternative view considers that oil markets have been distorted by substantial and volatile speculative financial flows. This dichotomy between fundamentals […]

The proposal for a crude oil price band seems to be gathering support. This comment discusses some of the limitations of an oil price band then it proposes a new framework for understanding the recent dynamics of oil price movements based on feedbacks. Rather than aiming at stabilising spot prices within a band the comment […]

This presentation, by Bassam Fattouh, challenges some of the conventional wisdom regarding the role of OPEC and analyses the Organisation’s role in the short-term management of the oil market and its behaviour over the oil price cycle. It also discusses some of the transformations in the oil market and how these pose long term challenges […]

On October 9 2009 the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies held a one-day conference in Oxford on ‘Oil Price Volatility: Causes and Measures of Mitigation Strategies’. The conference focused on three themes: the role of fundamentals and financial factors in explaining the recent sharp swings in oil prices and the marked increase in price volatility; […]